Week 7 Tutorial: Two Commons, No Fixed Venue

Locating where a queue's implicit agreement is strongest and weakest, and walking a route to observe threshold litter, ahead of Assignment 2.

7 September 2027

Activity, part one: queueing#

Observe a queue anywhere strangers are waiting their turn — a counter, a bus stop, a food stall — and note where this civilisational protocol looks strongest (a clear single-file front) versus weakest (an ambiguous cluster, a fork that never re-merged cleanly).

Activity, part two: threshold litter#

Walk a short, familiar route past at least one public bin and note where litter actually accumulates relative to it — right at the bin, a few metres short, or somewhere else entirely. Note whether you can identify who dropped anything: littering is usually audience-less — you’re reading a trace, not watching an act.

Record your reaction#

For the queue, note any moment where it forked or merged, and how the people involved resolved — or failed to resolve — it. For the litter walk, note what reading the aftermath instead of watching the moment changes about what counts as evidence.

Reflection#

Using the lecture’s cutting spectrum (asking first, exploiting an ambiguous merge, walking straight to the front), place the queue you observed on that spectrum and justify where it sits. Assignment 2 is due this week and asks for exactly this kind of evidence.